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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930412">Good Bones</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/pseuds/blackberrychai'>blackberrychai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Dimivain Big Bang, Ghosts, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Character, Trans Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Trans Male Character, a whole lot of mental health issues here oof</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:14:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,749</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930412</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/pseuds/blackberrychai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The old Blaiddyd house has been uninhabited for ten years, ever since Lambert died. If it seems to have fallen into greater disrepair than seems likely in that time, nobody’s been paying enough attention to notice. When Sylvain comes looking for refuge from his shitty job and shittier father, keeping Dimitri company in his gigantic old house seems like a good idea. But there are things lurking in the corners that neither of them expect.</p><p>A story about ghosts both literal and metaphorical, recovery, and the slow process of putting yourself back together.</p><p>(Written for the Dimivain Big Bang)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Good Bones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was written for the Dimivain Big Bang, and is accompanied by amazing art from Evie <a href="https://twitter.com/yevievt">(@yevievt)</a>!</p><p>If you're interested, the house this fic takes place in is based mainly on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_House">Belton House</a> in Lincolnshire. It's absolutely beautiful, and in distinctly better shape than Dimitri's house.</p><p>Some warnings for: somewhat dehumanising internal monologues, some mildly spooky stuff, things that ambiguously may or may not be hallucinations, references to psychiatric institutionalisation, and a whole lot of self-hatred and disgust. If you notice anything I've forgotten to warn for, please let me know!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote><p> </p>
<p></p><div><p>
      <em>                                      Any decent realtor,</em>
    </p></div><div><p>
      <em>walking you through a real shithole, chirps on</em>
    </p></div><div><p>
      <em>about good bones: This place could be beautiful,</em>
    </p></div><div><p>
      <em>right? You could make this place beautiful.</em>
    </p></div><div><p>
      <em>                        —Maggie Smith</em>
    </p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p>“We had a—a falling out,” Sylvain said. His voice was crackly and faint over the line, and his breath sounded strangely loud through the old receiver on the kitchen wall.</p><p>Dimitri shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry,” he said.</p><p>“Don’t be. It was a long time coming.”</p><p>Only the faint static, for a long moment.</p><p>“Anyway,” Sylvain said. “I just wanted to—well. I was going to ask, do you need any… help, or whatever? With the house?”</p><p>Dimitri frowned. “I’m quite all right, Sylvain. You don’t need to check up on me or anything.”</p><p>“No, that’s not what I meant.” Sylvain sighed. “I’ve actually been… well, I’ve sort of been evicted. My beloved father was paying my rent, and when I quit the company he stopped.”</p><p>“Oh,” Dimitri said, flat and blank.</p><p>Sylvain continued. “So, well. Maybe I could come and help you out for a while? Fix up the house? Just until I find a new job, or something.”</p><p>“Of course!” Dimitri said, mind springing back into action. “You don’t need to ask, Sylvain, I’m always happy to help. Come over, stay as long as you like.”</p><p>His voice was still faint, distorted, but there was definite relief in Sylvain’s exhale. “Thank you,” he said.</p><p>“Do you need help packing up your flat?” Dimitri asked. “I’m sure I could find a way to get into the city if you need.”</p><p>“Right, you still aren’t driving,” Sylvain said. “But no, don’t worry. Felix and Ingrid said they’d come help at the weekend, so I guess I’ll drive out to you on… Sunday? Is that OK?”</p><p>“Of course,” he said again, trying to sound warm. “Say… say hi from me, I suppose.”</p><p>“Dimitri. Just text them!” Sylvain sounded exasperated. “I called your phone like four times. I had to get the number for the house off Felix’s dad, of all people.”</p><p>“I’d actually forgotten it was still connected,” Dimitri said sheepishly. “But I… forget to charge my phone a lot. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Sylvain sighed. “Don’t be. Anyway, I’ll see you on Sunday, I guess?”</p><p>“See you soon.”</p><p>Dimitri put the phone back on its dusty hook on the wall. It must have been bought when he was a child, and nobody had bothered to update it—it was still one of those bulky, analogue things with a long, spiralling cord between the receiver and its cradle. It was a miracle it still worked. Half the electric wires in the house didn’t, too damaged by damp, or mice, or something. He sighed, and leant his back against the wall, looking around the high-ceilinged kitchen. It was set half below ground, the sun coming through windows set high up in the walls, and it was far too vast for even one family, really. The whole house was, and it only felt even emptier with just Dimitri there.</p><p>It had never used to feel like this. Even when he was small, this room had always been filled with light, and sound, and someone clattering pans together happily in the background. The enormous old range lay silent and cold—he only ever used the little electric cooker they’d had installed in case it broke. The long table down the centre of the room lay empty, the richly coloured wood bare and dry.</p><p>There was just dust in the air, now. Dust, and Dimitri.</p><p> </p><p>Sylvain arrived on Sunday, like he’d said. Dimitri had woken early, in the little room that Dedue had helped him turn from a pantry to a bedroom, since all the actual bedrooms seemed to be filled with mildew, and rot, and more dust than actual furniture. His bed was the smallest one they’d been able to find in the whole ridiculous place, filled with giant king-sized monstrosities—it was narrow, and made of iron, and his back hurt after every night on it. They’d dragged it from the very top of the house in the old servants’ quarters, down the wide main staircase, feet slipping on the wood, their grunts out of place in the grandeur of the main hall.</p><p>He spent the morning sitting listlessly at the kitchen table, staring at a cup of tea that seemed to have gone cold minutes after he’d made it. At one point, he remembered what Sylvain had mentioned about his phone, and scrambled to go and plug it in. But then he couldn’t find a charger and gave up, went back to sitting, doing nothing.</p><p>When Sylvain finally did arrive, Dimitri was at the point of waiting where the leftover energy practically exploded out of him. The sound of the car engine outside, the crunch of wheels in the loose stones in the drive brought him sharply out of his reverie, and he dashed out to the front door, where he stood nervously, waiting for Sylvain to position his car neatly out of the way of anyone else trying to get to the house. It was pointless. There were never any other cars.</p><p>Getting out of the car, Sylvain enveloped Dimitri in a hug, and he gave a sharp grunt of surprise.</p><p>“Sylvain!” Dimitri said, and he let go.</p><p>“It’s been a while,” Sylvain offered, grinning broadly. “It’s good to see you.”</p><p>“You saw me a couple of weeks ago,” Dimitri objected, but let it drop. Better to leave unsaid the months before that, when he’d been in the psych unit, his visiting hours strictly limited. “Let me help you bring stuff in.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sylvain said. “There’s quite a lot in the car, but most of it can just stay there. Didn’t really have anywhere to leave most of it.”</p><p>“You can bring it in if you like,” he offered. “Not like I’m short on space.”</p><p>Sylvain looked up at the house behind them. It had a blank, wide façade of centuries-old stone, topped with a row of little garret windows. Half the windows were covered with boards, and many of those that were still visible had panes broken or just entirely missing. Two wings sat perpendicular to the main body of the house, turning it into a wide shape like an H stretched sideways. The windows on the lowest floor sat right at ground level. Inside, they were set high in the half-submerged rooms that were once the working rooms of the house, and so contained everything actually useful.</p><p>“I can see that,” Sylvain said dryly. “But no, don’t worry.”</p><p>They brought in the couple of suitcases Sylvain apparently deemed essential—clothes, mostly, but also one stupidly heavy box of books that took both of them to carry it up the wide steps at the front of the house. The steps were designed to be impressive, not easy to carry things up, and they lead straight up past the lower floor.</p><p>The things collected in the entrance hall, at the foot of the sweeping staircase. It was the grand centrepiece of the house, once, stretching between the two main floors of the house. Light streamed in through the windows on each floor, and made the broken banisters and carpet beginning to turn mouldy in places look almost picturesque. There was a sort of elegiac atmosphere to it all, Dimitri found himself thinking. Grand, and beautiful, in a sort of fading empire way.</p><p>Sylvain sneezed.</p><p>“Sorry,” Dimitri said. “It’s… not great, I know.”</p><p>He laughed in response. “Don’t worry. Well, it looks like you do need my help with fixing things up. Though,” he added dubiously, “I think some of this stuff might be a bit beyond us.</p><p>“I haven’t got very far,” Dimitri confessed, “Mostly because I don’t even know where to start.”</p><p>“We can work it out,” Sylvain said brightly. “Though I don’t think I quite understand how it got quite this bad this quickly. It’s been what, less than ten years since your stopped living here?”</p><p>Dimitri could feel his face tighten involuntarily. “Almost exactly ten. Uncle Rufus doesn’t like it much here.” He left out the time for which he’d lived here a year ago. That hardly counted as human habitation, anyway.</p><p>Sylvain snorted. “Well, fuck him. We’ll sort it out, don’t worry.”</p><p>They dragged Sylvain’s stuff around to the back stairs, and down into the kitchen. Dimitri set about making some fresh tea, though half of his last cup still sat on the table.</p><p>“Oh, it’s way better in here,” Sylvain remarked, and Dimitri didn’t miss the slight note of relief in his voice.</p><p>He sighed. “Dedue helped me. He said at least one room here should be, ah, ‘not a health hazard,’ and that if it was any it should be the kitchen.”</p><p>“That’s… very Dedue,” Sylvain said. “But he’s probably right.”</p><p>“He usually is,” Dimitri agreed.</p><p>“Speaking of health hazards, though…” Sylvain continued. “Are there any rooms upstairs that are, you know, fit to sleep in?”</p><p>Dimitri stopped fiddling with the teabags. “Oh. I didn’t… I didn’t even think of that.”</p><p>“It’s cool,” Sylvain shrugged. “We can work something out.”</p><p>“Down here is about the only floor that the damp doesn’t seem to have got into. I’ve been sleeping in the old pantry,” admitted Dimitri.</p><p>Sylvain looked dubious. “Did you get a bed in there or something?”</p><p>He nodded. “Dedue helped me find one upstairs. It was just easier to bring it down than try to clear something out up there.”</p><p>“Well, perfect!” said Sylvain brightly. “We can do the same. Is there another room down here I could use?”</p><p>So after they finished their tea—or rather, after Sylvain finished his, Dimitri finding himself unable to drink at all—they set off prowling through the lowest floor of the house.</p><p>The kitchen was set in the eastern wing of the house, taking up most of it with one large room. Luckily, too, the eastern side seemed to be the part of the house least damaged, and even the upper floors, with the roof leaking and disintegrating, had fared much less badly on that side. It was probably the wind, Dimitri supposed. It came from the west out here, blowing in across flat land from the sea, ready to batter in his windows.</p><p>Next to the kitchen was the pantry, which Dimitri had taken over, and a very dreary-looking scullery. The walls were stained in here, in ways he couldn’t quite understand or explain, and Sylvain took one look at it and scrunched up his nose.</p><p>“Let’s try the rest of the house,” he suggested.</p><p>The kitchen wing was connected to the rest of the house by a discreet staircase that emerged near the dining room upstairs, and a dark corridor that ran through the centre of the house. At the other end was the old servants’ hall, taking up most of the western wing. But the windows were broken and poorly boarded up in there, and the stone floor had gained a thin layer of something almost like mud, between the rain and the dirt that found its way in. Dimitri didn’t even consider suggesting there.</p><p>That left the small rooms off the corridor through the centre of the house. Many were just cupboards, storage places, dark and musty smelling. But next to the stairs that led up to a half-hidden door behind the grand staircase in the entrance hall, was the old butler’s pantry.</p><p>The windows were intact here, too, though there was only one. It gave a little glimpse of the wildly overgrown gardens at the back of the house, and the light filtered in slightly green from the plants. The walls were covered in dark panelling and heavy cabinets, which would once have held all the house’s precious glassware and best china. Dimitri couldn’t think what could have happened to it, but it wasn’t there now.</p><p>“We should be able to fit a mattress in here, right?” Sylvain asked, looking around in satisfaction. “And there’s a couple of plugs in the corner, I’m sure we can find a lamp as well.”</p><p>Dimitri was not sure they could find a lamp, or at least not one that worked, but he nodded anyway. “We should probably clean up before we put a bed in here, though. It’s a little… dusty.”</p><p>The dust lay in thick layers, and Sylvain reached out to run a finger along a shelf. He grimaced, and held the finger up to Dimitri with a dark greyish coating on it. “Yeah.”</p><p>Cleaning supplies were another of the things Dedue had insisted on buying when he was helping Dimitri move back in here, so luckily he knew where to find them. They set about mopping the floor and wiping down every surface, and by the end of it both their backs ached, but the room was clean.</p><p>“Shall we look for a bed, then?” Dimitri suggested</p><p>Sylvain held up a hand and leaned back against a cabinet. “Give me a moment,” he said with a grin.</p><p>The sun was beginning to set as they began their bed hunt. They started up on the second floor, where all the main bedrooms were, but were met even in the rooms that seem in relatively good shape at first glance with sheets smelling of damp and mildew, and mattresses that sagged terrifyingly in the middle.</p><p>“We found my bed up in the attics, where the old servants’ quarters are,” Dimitri suggested eventually, after three or so hopeful-looking rooms had resulted only in disappointment.</p><p>Sylvain wrinkled his nose. “If the problem is the rain getting in, won’t it be even worse up there?”</p><p>“It is,” Dimitri said forlornly. “But lots of the furniture up there was put under plastic sheets or something, so I think it’s survived a little better.</p><p>He sighed. “Attics it is, then.”</p><p>But when Sylvain stepped onto the narrow staircase leading up to the top floor, the whole structure groaned uneasily at him, and the place where he had stepped sagged and threatened to crumble under his foot. He stepped off immediately, and poked at the wood with a finger.</p><p>“I think it’s rotting?” he said. “It all feels kinda… damp.”</p><p>“Let me try,” Dimitri said, and began to walk up the stairs. He placed his feet as close to the wall as he could manage, and poked at each one gingerly with his toes before he put any weight on it.</p><p>About halfway up, though, something shifted under his foot, and a damp board gave way with a half-hearted splintering sound.</p><p>“Shit, shit, are you OK?” Sylvain asked.</p><p>Dimitri lifted his foot gingerly out of the hole that he had plunged into. His shoe was now covered in little shards of wood splinters. “I’m fine,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand, though, Dedue and I got up here fine a few weeks ago.”</p><p>Peering up at the roof above them, Sylvain hummed. “There was that storm, right? The other night? Look at the ceiling, there’s definitely water stains there. Maybe it’s just a recent thing.”</p><p>“The final straw on the camel’s back,” Dimitri agreed gloomily, and sighed. “I’m sorry. I think we have an old camp bed somewhere? Might that be all right just for tonight?”</p><p>“That’ll be fine,” Sylvain said as cheerily as he could. “Come on, get off the stairs. That can’t be safe.”</p><p>Dimitri picked his way back down the stairs again. “I think the camp beds are in one of the cupboards up here,” he said vaguely, and began to wander off down the passageway.</p><p>Sylvain sighed, and trailed after him.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>That night, Sylvain slept on a camp bed that was more just some canvas stretched over a dismantle-able iron frame. He did his best to cover it with the extra blankets he’d retrieved from his car, but the edges still dug into his sides, and made it practically impossible to sleep. He woke up every hour or so, each time he rolled into a hard edge of metal, or he shifted too much and the legs of the bed grated on the floor.</p><p>He gave up at six o’clock, as the sun began to gradually illuminate his dim room. There was no lamp, still, and he had to use the torch on his phone to find clothes to dress in, and then again in the corridor to see enough to make his way to the kitchen. The light was barely brighter there, but the windows faced east and caught what there was of it. And at least there were electric lights that actually worked until the sun rose fully.</p><p>He puttered around, making tea, investigating the fridge and the kitchen cupboards. They were quite remarkably bare, and it occurred to him that he had no idea how Dimitri had actually been getting food. The fridge held a few sad looking eggs, a stalk of broccoli, some half-empty jars of jam, and a pot of cream that made him wince when he sniffed it.</p><p>Sylvain sighed. The nearest shop was a couple of miles away. Had Dimitri been walking there, he wondered? That seemed unlikely, but he had no car, nor a bicycle or anything. Sylvain just hoped he had actually been eating. But in any case, it was a sparsely stocked shop in a tiny hamlet, fine for essentials but not really much else. If he wanted to buy much more than bread and milk, he had better drive the fifteen or so miles to the next town, which at least tended to be better stocked.</p><p>Slightly impressed with himself that he even still remembered these things from the times as a child when he came to stay here during the holidays, eager as ever to take any excuse to get away from his own home, he pulled up the map on his phone to plot out a route to the shops. Panning across the empty green space that surrounded them, he marvelled at the fact that they were barely twenty-five miles from the suburbs of Fhirdiad, and still he felt like he was in an entirely different world from his flat in the city. The signal was so bad that it took forever to load his map, and there was so little on it when it appeared that it barely seemed to make a difference.</p><p>He fried himself an egg for breakfast, sniffing it careful as he broke it open to check it wasn’t going off. It seemed to be fine, luckily and he ate it eagerly. Feeling more refreshed now, he decided to venture up to the main floors while he waited for Dimitri to wake up. Emerging into the entrance hall from the shadows beneath the staircase, he smiled up at the early morning light that hung in the air, illuminating the dust in a way that made him feel almost glad it was there. The dark, heavily carved wood of the panelling and the bannisters looked paler, less imposing at this time of the day, and the chequered pattern of the marble flagstones felt cheery, rather than formal and daunting.</p><p>Letting himself soak up the atmosphere for a moment, he watched the dust swirl. Then he sighed, and tentatively pushed open the door to one of the passageways.</p><p>It was the one leading through the western half of the house. He glanced in at a few rooms as he passed, but most of the furniture seemed to have been covered with white dust sheets, and it was eerily silent in the early morning light. Gingerly, he pushed open the door of a room he remembered had been a favourite of all of theirs in childhood. It had probably been far more formal, once, but Dimitri’s parents had taken out much of the probably priceless furniture, and the room had been a bright, open space that children could freely roam. In the summer, the doors at the back had been permanently flung open, the sun flooding in, and they would run in and out at will, glorying in the freedom of exploration in the vast gardens. It had been where he, and Ingrid, and Felix, and Dimitri had spent their days. It had been warm, and welcoming, and more than anything it had been what Sylvain pictured when people said “home”.</p><p>But it was now a poor shadow of the sun-drenched room he remembered. The thin early light made the room feel huge compared to its meagre contents, the shadows lingering in the corners larger than any of the furniture. It was cold in here, too, which seemed antithetical to his memories. Even in winter, this part of the house had kept a cosiness, a comforting sense of secure warmth.</p><p>He shut the door again. Down the passage was the west wing, the most damaged part of the house. He peeked nervously into the old chapel. It hadn’t been used for decades at least, and half of the old pews were collapsing in on themselves, the rail around the altar rotted and falling apart. Sylvain shuddered, and left quickly. There was something he found oddly creepy about a chapel inside a house, even though he knew it was a long-standing tradition when the house was built.</p><p>But then this house was full of useless rooms. Dimitri’s family had been old nobility, once, though this house was one of the few remnants of it. The rest of this wing held a grand dining room large enough that he thought it had been used for balls, once. Its only purpose even in their childhoods had been to delight in the polished wood floor, seeing how far they could run and slide across it. And there were innumerable little anterooms whose use he had never understood scattered throughout the house. It felt like nothing so much as a jigsaw puzzle where the box had come with a whole pile of extra, unnecessary pieces.</p><p>Sylvain sighed. This side of the house just felt depressing, now. It wasn’t the grand and wonderful thing it must have been when it was built, and it wasn’t comforting and warm and lived in as it had been when he’d visited as a child. It was just empty, full of damp and dust, and smelling vaguely of mould.</p><p>The east wing was a little better, he found. The breakfast room was more or less intact, its beautifully carved furniture some of the few antique pieces that Dimitri’s parents had still used. There was less damp here in general, and when he ventured into the library, half anticipating something awful, it seemed remarkably untouched. A little more exploration showed that wasn’t quite true, but aside from a few patches of damp, most of the books seemed to have survived.</p><p>Considerably more satisfied than he had been at the beginning of his exploration, and seeing that there was actually full daylight now, Sylvain happily went back down to the kitchen. Even the upper floors of the east wing felt far more decrepit in comparison, though—somehow this was the only warm room in the house. It was definitely the only place that felt even slightly human. Dimitri’s habitation, and Dedue’s influence in fixing it up were evident everywhere in books left on the long table, cups sitting by the sink, equipment on the counters—and now some of the things Sylvain had brought in with him as well.</p><p>Dimitri still hadn’t appeared, though, so Sylvain decided to give him a bit longer, and attempt to find some kind of lighting for his gloomy room. Somewhere in the boxes in his car were at least a few small lamps. One of those would do for now.</p><p>The sky had turned into one of those high grey clouds that shrouded everything with an aura of dull hopelessness, while not actually intending to rain and give anyone enough of an excuse to stay inside. The house looked even more dismal than it had yesterday—he could see details of its decline now that he hadn’t noticed the day before. The roof was collapsing in places, and there were alarming cracks in the stonework of the façade. And it wasn’t just that windows were broken, the frames themselves were crumbling and rotting. Sylvain sighed. There was a lot more work to be done than he’d supposed, and he didn’t even know where to begin with half of it.</p><p>Turning away from it all, he began to root through the boxes in his car boot. They were sealed irregularly with tape, some of them neatly labelled in Ingrid’s printed capitals, some with Felix’s indecipherable scrawl. It made him smile, just a little, to have that reminder of them. But mostly he just felt daunted by how little of a clue he had where his lamp might be.</p><p>His flat had come furnished. Elegantly, luxuriously furnished, too—his bastard of a father only cared about appearances, really, but at least that extended to keeping Sylvain living well. As long as he had stayed in line, of course. He’d been severely tempted to take any and all of the furniture with him—it would certainly have been a kick in the face to his father—but in the end, he’d had nowhere to put any of it. Ingrid, Felix, and most of his other friends live either in tiny student rooms, cramped flats, or hundreds of miles away. And his car, regrettably, is far too small to fit his favourite armchair in. His whole life turned out to fit neatly into a small vehicle.</p><p>With a sigh, he resigned himself to unloading all of the boxes, and rooting through them somewhere with more space. It took him the better part of an hour to cart them all first into the grand hallway, and then down the stairs into the kitchen, where they could be stacked up in an out-of-the-way corner.</p><p>It was late in the morning by the time he finished, but Dimitri still hadn’t emerged. Tentatively, Sylvain knocked on the door of the old pantry.</p><p>“Dimitri?” he called.</p><p>There was a muffled thump from the room, and then the door swung open abruptly. Dimitri was wearing loose pyjama trousers, and a baggy jumper, and stared back at Sylvain with his one eye wide. The patch over the other was askew, its strap pushing his hair up at wild angles.</p><p>“Hi,” Sylvain said cautiously.</p><p>“Sylvain,” replied Dimitri blankly. “Hello.”</p><p>He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. There was something slightly alarming about Dimitri’s expression, and it left him more disconcerted than he would have anticipated. “I, uh… I was going to drive to the shop and get some food. I wanted to… see if you wanted to come?”</p><p>Dimitri continued to look blank for a long moment, then shook his head slightly. “Ah, no. I think I’d rather not. Unless you need assistance?”</p><p>“Nah, I can manage,” Sylvain said, forcing a smile. “Is there anything you need?”</p><p>Another overly long pause. Then, “Bread,” said Dimitri. “Please.”</p><p>Sylvain nodded. “Of course. Are you… OK?”</p><p>He smiled back, but Sylvain was well practised at telling a real smile from a fake. He’d watched his own in the mirror enough times, and Dimitri was nowhere near as good at it as he was. “Of course,” Dimitri said. “If you’ll excuse me.”</p><p>The door shut quietly but firmly in front of him.</p><p> </p><p>He drove to the shops and back alone in his newly-empty car. Dimitri was still nowhere to be seen when he got back. Sylvain unpacked the food, put it away in his best guess approximations of where the various things should go, and then abruptly found himself at a loss for things to do. He’d eaten a sandwich for lunch in the town, and the rest of the afternoon was now a yawning, blank expanse. He began by finally digging the lamp out of his boxes, and setting it up in his new bedroom, but that only filled half an hour. The clock in the kitchen ticked loudly on.</p><p>Eventually, he decided he might as well resume his exploration of the house. He’d never got beyond the main floor, and if he wanted to find a better bed, a closer examination of the other floors was definitely needed.</p><p>The entrance hall was as eerily silent as it had been early in the morning, though without the dawn light it was distinctly less beautiful, and more just… decrepit. The wood of the staircase was discoloured in places, and there were spindles missing from the intricately carved banisters.</p><p>Up on the first floor, he decided to start with the east wing. He’d lost all hope of finding anything salvageable in the western half of the house. The ground floor rooms were already so damaged, and from what he’d seen the damp and rot only got worse higher up the house. Instead, he began opening every bedroom door, every cupboard, looking for mattresses that might be small enough to drag downstairs, or even just extra pillows or blankets.</p><p>A few rooms were relatively unaffected by the damp, though unfortunately the one he’d always stayed in when visiting was not one of those. It had been a bright, cheery room with walls painted a pale yellow, the furniture all light, warm-coloured wood. There was a large damp stain on one wall now, the paint was faded, and the bed creaked ominously when he tried to sit down on it. The mattress, too, smelt strongly of mould, so he sadly gave up on salvaging this one just now.</p><p>Moving further down the corridor, and then into the back half of the east wing proper, several more guest bedrooms proved to be either entirely too damp, or to have beds and mattresses so large that Sylvain had absolutely no idea how they were even got into the rooms in the first place. He sighed. He was running out of rooms.</p><p>The front part of the east wing held a few rooms that had been studies originally, he thought, but had been largely unused for decades. He opened the doors here quickly, just glancing into each one to check it wasn’t another bedroom with a potential mattress. Then on the third or so door, he froze with it barely ajar, his hand on the doorknob.</p><p>It was Dimitri’s room. Or at least, what had been Dimitri’s room once. Sylvain took a long, slow breath, and stepped tentatively in.</p><p>The curtains were drawn for some reason, and in the dim light that filtered through, the room looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. It was still decorated as for the almost teenage girl everyone had thought he’d been—the posters on the wall, the little model horses on a shelf, it was all precisely as Sylvain remembered it. On one of the walls a collection of photos had been taped up. There was Dimitri, hair down to his waist, beaming in excitement next to Ingrid and some horses, and then Sylvain spotted himself in one, lanky and freckled and grinning. Dimitri’s father was there, and his step-mother, and Glenn.</p><p>The mattress on the single bed would fit in Sylvain’s room. He shut the door, and went back downstairs.</p><p> </p><p>Making dinner took a long time. Not because it was difficult—cooking was actually one of the few household tasks that Sylvain was actually any good at—but because he couldn’t focus on it in the slightest. He would get halfway through a task, and then catch himself staring off towards Dimitri’s room, hoping he would emerge.</p><p>He didn’t. Sylvain made the food, and ate his half of it, and then carefully covered a plate filled with Dimitri’s portion. Then he dug out a book, and sat down, and waited. Disturbing Dimitri would probably be counter-productive, but he wanted to be here if he came out of his room any time soon. But the clock ticked on, and on, and between his exploring, unpacking, and lack of sleep the night before, Sylvain found himself admitting defeat.</p><p>Leaving Dimitri’s food on the table, at the end near his room, he scribbled a cheery little note to tuck under the edge of the plate, and with a final backwards glance went back to his dark little room. With a sigh, he lay back down for another uncomfortable night on the terrible camp bed. He wasn’t sure how there could be so much <em>nothing</em> in a house this big, but he had well and truly drawn a blank on his mattress search today, and felt somehow incredibly disinclined to go exploring further. Some of the rooms were undamaged enough, he supposed, that he could go and sleep in one of them. But it felt somehow very wrong to settle himself half a house away from Dimitri. At least here, he was only down the corridor.</p><p><em>Tomorrow</em>, he thought wearily, as he shifted uncomfortably on the camp bed. <em>Tomorrow, I’ll go and buy a proper mattress.</em></p><p>The next day, he did not go and buy a proper mattress. He emerged from his room late in the morning, tired enough that he slept despite the awful camp bed, and found Dimitri fast asleep sitting at the kitchen table, his head pillowed on the rough wood.</p><p>Sylvain knelt down next to him. “Dimitri?” he asked, and placed a careful hand on his shoulder “Are you OK?”</p><p>Dimitri came awake with a start, jolting upright and flinching away from Sylvain.</p><p>“Hey, hey, it’s OK!” he said, lifting his hands. “It’s just me, everything’s fine.”</p><p>“Sylvain,” Dimitri said in the blank voice of the barely awake. Then his shoulders relaxed. “Ah. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” he said gently. “Are you OK?”</p><p>Dimitri sighed, and pushed his hair back out of his face. “Yes. Yes, I’m sorry. I… couldn’t sleep last night, so I came back in here, and then I must have fallen asleep at the table.”</p><p>“Don’t worry. It happens to everyone,” said Sylvain, trying to give Dimitri a gentle smile.</p><p>“Does it?” he said, eyebrows knitting. “I just…” he broke off, and sighed. “Never mind. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You really don’t need to apologise.”</p><p>Dimitri shrugged. “I, um, ate the food you left as well. Thank you.”</p><p>“It was no trouble,” Sylvain said. “I was cooking anyway, and I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten anything all day.”</p><p>With a sigh, Dimitri stood up from the table. “I hadn’t,” he admitted.</p><p>“You should eat,” said Sylvain as gently as he could. “I was going to make some breakfast, you want some?”</p><p>Dimitri lifted one shoulder and grimaced. “I think I will go to bed, actually. But thank you, Sylvain.” And he trundled off down the short corridor to his room.</p><p>Sylvain stared after him, and sighed.</p><p>He felt too anxious about Dimitri’s state to want to leave the house for the rest of the day. And even the next day, his friend’s withdrawn mood continued. Sylvain wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been expecting, coming here—he supposed now it wasn’t him and Dimitri spending every moment together, but it certainly wasn’t this. He felt slightly pathetic thinking it even in the privacy of his mind, but he’d rather hoped that being here would let him spend more time with an old friend. Between one thing and another, he hadn’t seen all that much of Dimitri in the last few years.</p><p>He’d started at university in Fhirdiad with Ingrid and Felix three years ago, and Sylvain had been overjoyed to have them all there as he finished his own degree. Sometimes being a couple of years older than your closest friends sucked. But Dimitri had ended up dropping out after only a few months, and had practically vanished.</p><p>As soon as he left Fhirdiad, Dimitri had fled back here, to the house he’d grown up in. There had been a few people working here, Sylvain vaguely remembered hearing—a caretaker and a gardener, or something—but Dimitri had immediately dismissed them, and he guessed now that nobody had bothered or remembered to re-hire them. Then Dimitri had spent the next year or so alternating between being dragged back into Fhirdiad by his uncle, and escaping him to come back to the old house.</p><p>Sylvain didn’t really know how Dimitri had actually lived for that year or so, before he ended up on the psych ward. He’d been struggling with his final exams, and then his new and soul-destroying job working for his father. Now, Sylvain mostly just regretted that he was too wrapped up in himself to notice his friend’s decline. The next thing he had heard was a detached message from Rufus telling him that Dimitri was in hospital.</p><p>Felix and Ingrid had received identical ones. They’d all gone to see him, lying pale and blank in his hospital bed, face wrapped in bandages. He hardly seemed to notice they were there, and when he was transferred straight from there to a psych ward, they’d carried on trekking out to see Dimitri for the long months that he’d been there. None of them still quite knew what had caused the breakdown, or led him to be institutionalised. They’d only heard that he had been hallucinating, and there had been an accident, which was how he’d lost his eye. Asking Dimitri those first months after it happened would have got them absolutely no answers, and once he began to recover, they didn’t want to risk his fragile stability by forcing him to think back on it. And asking Rufus was out of the question—none of them liked him. Not even Dimitri.</p><p>And it hadn’t been reassuring that when he was released, he’d only wanted to come back out here. But Ingrid had glared at him and Felix if they even came close to suggesting that, and everyone who knew him was making more of an effort to stay in touch, check on him, everything. And Dimitri now was far better than he had been, unquestionably. But as the days went by, it was becoming clearer and clearer to Sylvain that <em>better</em> absolutely did not mean good.</p><p>Seeing him every day was very different to seeing him every few weeks or months, as he had for the past few years. In the moment, Dimitri would brighten up, respond to questions, make conversation. But Sylvain now got to see what happened after those moments.</p><p>Every time, he would just withdraw. Sylvain had taken to spending most of his time in the kitchen, since it was the brightest and most welcoming room in the place. Dimitri would appear at irregular intervals, and nod vaguely at him, before shambling past to hide in his room. From there Sylvain would hear the occasional shifting of the bed or the creak of a chair, but no other sign of habitation. Or he’d go up into the rest of the house, and Sylvain would completely lose him in the warren of rooms.</p><p>Sylvain had no idea how to stop it happening, either. The most he managed to do was prod Dimitri as gently as possible towards eating. He didn’t think he ate at <em>all</em> if Sylvain didn’t leave things for him, which was both terrifying and explained the emptiness of the fridge when he’d arrived.</p><p>And he was still sleeping on the fucking camp bed.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>“Hi, Dimitri,” Sylvain said, looking up from his book. He was sprawled comfortably in a chair in front of the fireplace, feet propped up.</p><p>Dimitri did his best to nod back at him. “Sylvain,” he managed.</p><p>“Are you hungry?”</p><p>He suppressed a wince. Sylvain was always asking him if he was hungry. He never was. “No,” he said. “I’m going to… walk.”</p><p>His sentence trailed off lamely, and Sylvain’s face shuttered closed a little in response. Dimitri turned away, not wanting to see the disgust that he must be hiding, and headed down the passageway into the house. It was just dusk, and when he emerged into the main hall, the light was patchy.</p><p>The shadows were gathering again. Dimitri nodded grimly, and proceeded up the stairs.</p><p>It had become a sort of unthinking ritual for him, whenever he didn’t know what else to do. He would wander up and down the corridors, stare into rooms that were half-destroyed shadows of what he remembered them being. There’s something spurring him to do this, but he can’t place the urge. He just paces, and stands, and avoids Sylvain.</p><p>Dimitri hadn’t meant to start avoiding Sylvain. It had sort of just… happened. The first day after his arrival, Dimitri had woken with a migraine directly behind his missing eye. He had sat on his bed, and stared at the wall, jumping at every slight noise of Sylvain moving around in the kitchen, or the pipes creaking. And then that day of isolation had grown gradually into a habit. He didn’t want to inflict his presence on Sylvain, and when the shuffling noises he made in the kitchen grew too grating to stay and listen to, he would slip out, and wander up into the rest of the house.</p><p>And he’d thought having Sylvain here might be good, might be helpful. But he could feel Sylvain’s irritation at him wafting off him whenever Dimitri was in the same room as him. Dimitri didn’t even eat properly, even when Sylvain left food specifically for him. He couldn’t even tell whether Sylvain had noticed the gradual fraying he could feel eating at the seams of his mind. And if he hadn’t yet—well, then the less time Dimitri spent with him, the less likely he was to notice.</p><p>So here he was instead, walking up and down the same corridors, blindly opening doors and staring blankly at their interiors. The rooms themselves didn’t even matter. They were just places to stare into and wait for the shadows to start twisting, or the wind at the broken windows to start shifting into whispers.</p><p>When he opened the door to what had been his own bedroom, he didn’t even realise which room it was for several long moments. His eye was too busy combing through the patches of darkness, cataloguing where the light from the door and the window fell, to really notice what was casting those shadows, what they were falling on.</p><p>The sheets on the bed didn’t seem to have been changed in years. He stepped into the room without thinking, and sat down on the bed, stroked a hand over the duvet cover. It was dusty, but otherwise seemed undamaged. The pattern on it was floral—he remembered choosing it with his step-mother, picking it out in the shop because he felt he was too old now for the little cartoon animals that he had previously favoured.</p><p>He was too large for the bed now. Testosterone had made him shoot up and out, and sitting here his knees are up by his chest. Looking down at the width of this child’s bed, his shoulders would hardly fit on it. He’d avoided this room for the past few months he’d been living here, and the fact that he had stumbled on it now was… not encouraging. His memories of his last stint of time here were patchy, but even when things had been truly bad, he didn’t think he’d ended up in this room.</p><p>It was peaceful in the dark. But he could feel himself shaking.</p><p>The person who had lived here was utterly foreign. He has all the memories, yes—but when he thought back on the carefree child he’d been here, it was like looking at a video of a stranger. The photos on the wall showed somebody else.</p><p>It took more effort than it should have to tear himself away. His bones were heavy as he stood up, the air thick like water, needing to be pushed through to reach the door. When he stumbled out into the corridor, he found suddenly that he was panting, and his face was damp. He stood in the dark passageway for a long time, or perhaps it was just seconds. But his breathing would not calm, and so he ran. Out of the east wing, down the passageway running through the centre of the house, across the landing at the top of the central hall, and out into the other side of the house. There was a long way to run in this place, and he kept going for as long as he could, until he was suddenly stumbling into another room.</p><p>He was barely looking where he was going. The window was broken, the boards covering it imperfect and warped. Only the slowly waxing moon lit anything in here. It was dead, and blank, and Dimitri almost sobbed in relief at the quiet. There was a puddle of rainwater on the floor that he only found when he stumbled into it, splashing it up over himself.</p><p>The cold of the water was just enough to make him notice where he was as he collapsed onto the ground against the wall. His vision was swimming, but that was his father’s bed in the dim, broken shafts of light twisting between the gaps in the boards of the window. The dresser by the wall was submerged in shadow, but that was—</p><p>The shadow moved. It stepped forward, and it crouched down, close enough that if it were really him he would feel the heat of his body, feel the movement of his breath in the air, feel him reach out to wrap his arm around Dimitri’s shoulders.</p><p>He buried his face in his knees.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Sylvain had been trying to sleep for what felt like hours now, but nothing seemed to be working. He’d stared at the ceiling, then at his phone until his eyes hurt from the bright screen in the dark. Then he turned on his side and tried to imagine patterns in the shadows of the old bureau across the room. He was just considering getting up and turning the light on properly when a shuffling came from the corridor outside.</p><p>“Dimitri?” he called, his own voice suddenly sounding absurdly loud in the quiet.</p><p>The shuffling paused for a moment, but there was no answer before it started again a second or two later. Sylvain sighed, and sat up. He might as well at least try going after him.</p><p>He’d barely seen Dimitri the past few days. He’d staggered back through the kitchen half-soaked a few days ago, and completely ignored Sylvain’s increasingly desperate attempts to hammer on his door. And every time he’d tried to speak to him since, or even <em>find</em> him since, Dimitri had slipped away. The idea of him fumbling around the crumbling manor in the dark was alarming, though, so if he could catch him this time, that would at least be a relief.</p><p>But by the time Sylvain had pulled on a jumper and made it to the door, Dimitri was nowhere to be seen. He must be moving faster than the shuffling had made it sound, or else he’d sped up just to avoid Sylvain.</p><p>The entrance hall, he guessed, was Dimitri’s most likely first destination. The movement had definitely been heading away from the kitchen, and he couldn’t think of any reason why the dusty dining rooms and parlours would be of any interest at this time.</p><p>He padded softly down the passageway, and up the narrow stairway that emerged, half-hidden at the back of the entrance hall. Moonlight filtered in through the few uncovered windows, pale on the stone floor and wooden panelling.</p><p>“Dimitri?” Sylvain called again, barely above a whisper this time. Even visiting as a child, raised voices by this imposing staircase had always felt somehow wrong, sacrilegious—like shouting in a church.</p><p>No response. He sighed, and began to climb the stairs.</p><p>“Dimitri, please?” he called again once he reached the top of the first flight, as loud as he dared. “I’m… I’m getting a bit worried here. Are you OK?”</p><p>In lieu of response, there was a small thud coming from the second floor, on the western side of the house. The worse side of the house, where he hadn’t really dared to do more than stare in through doorways at thoroughly disintegrating bedrooms.</p><p>Sylvain swore under his breath, then hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “I really don’t think it’s safe up here!” he called as he reached the landing. “You’re going to hurt yourself in the dark!”</p><p>A remembered vision of a collapsed beam in the bedroom at the far end of the wing on this side of the house struck him, and he grimaced. It would be just Dimitri’s luck to put two feet straight through rotten floorboards this time, or stumble into a large four-poster that was just looking for the right person to collapse onto.</p><p>Still, there was no response. Sylvain gripped hold of the bannister for a long moment, and clenched his eyes shut. Breathing in slowly through his nose, he smelt the dust, the damp, the faint scent of mould.</p><p>Then he let go, and made his way down the west corridor. “Dimitri?” he called again, more softly, as he padded down the corridor. He peered into rooms as he passed them, squinting into rooms that at best were thick with cobwebs and shadow, but more often than not were impenetrable blackness. The rooms were dismissed more on the basis of the silence that they practically emanated than based on the fact that Sylvain could not see Dimitri in them.</p><p>He swallowed. His shouting from before felt even more wrong now. “Dimitri,” he whispered hoarsely instead. And still, no response.</p><p>Then, a small, muffled-sounding noise, from ahead of Sylvain. One of his hands was on the doorknob of yet another room, but he abandoned it, leaving the door to slowly creak open. He dashed forward, to where this corridor met the one running the length of the wing. At the corner, he looked back and forth, called again.</p><p>“Dimitri!”</p><p>The small noise, again. Sylvain’s gaze suddenly caught on a huddled shape against the wall, pressed up to one of the doors. The only window on this corridor was right at the end, and not much of its already faint illumination made it as far as Dimitri. And only slivers of light crept around the corner from the staircase, so it took him a moment to realise that this hunched lump on the floor <em>was</em> Dimitri. He sat with his head resting on his knees, limp blond hair about the brightest thing in the dim place, and his arms wrapped tightly around his legs.</p><p>Sylvain rushed to him, and knelt beside him on the damp carpet.</p><p>“Dimitri? Are you OK?” He took hold of Dimitri’s arm, tried to prise his hands off his own legs, but Dimitri shook him off.</p><p>“No, no, you aren’t real,” he muttered, face still buried.</p><p>Sylvain bit at his lip. “It’s me, Dimitri,” he said, resting a hand on one tensed-up arm. “I’m real, I swear.”</p><p>Finally, finally, Dimitri lifted his head. His one eye was wide, wild, and glinted bright and blue in some faint beam of light.</p><p>“Sylvain?” he said softly, and his voice shook just a little. But he didn’t bury his face in his arms again, and Sylvain would take that as a good first step.</p><p>“Yeah,” he replied, voice as loud as he dared in some pathetic attempt to prove he <em>was</em> real, he <em>was</em> there. Carefully, trying to move slowly enough that he didn’t startle Dimitri, he repositioned his legs and twisted so he was sat beside Dimitri, their shoulders pressed together. He leant into him just a little, trying to be a reassuring weight.</p><p>Gradually, Dimitri’s breathing evened out, and the shaking that had wracked him slowed into a gentle rocking back and forth. And then that too slowed, when Sylvain put a hand gently on Dimitri’s knee. Finally, he unlocked his arms from around his legs, and let himself uncurl just a little.</p><p>Sylvain turned to look at him just in time to catch Dimitri’s wince as he straightened his legs out, stretching out the numbness that must have settled in. His hand was left dangling in the air, and Sylvain drew it back to himself quickly, feeling oddly foolish.</p><p>“OK?” he asked gently, voice at a whisper.</p><p>Dimitri did not reply, and just stared straight ahead of him at the opposite wall of the corridor. Infinitesimally, after a pause that seemed to stretch for whole minutes, he gave Sylvain the barest possible nod.</p><p>“Do you want to… try getting up, maybe?” Sylvain tried. “We can go back downstairs, maybe make some tea—”</p><p>But now Dimitri was shaking his head, vehement and suddenly full of life again. “No,” he said, in a hoarse rasp. “I have to—I need to see something.”</p><p>Sylvain bit his lip. “Should I come with you?” he suggested. He really did not want to leave Dimitri alone when he was like this.</p><p>It only elicited a shrug from Dimitri, though. He lifted his knees, and started rocking back and forth again, shifting his weight between his back leaned against the wall, and his legs. It was hard to tell whether he was preparing to get up or to curl up again. Sylvain stretched out his hand again, placed on Dimitri’s knee. But where it had managed to calm him a moment ago, it now seemed to do absolutely nothing.</p><p>“What do you need to see?” Sylvain asked.</p><p>Dimitri continued to ignore him.</p><p>“Dimitri?” he said. “Come on, please?”</p><p>A long silence. Sylvain stared at Dimitri. Dimitri stared at the wall.</p><p>“It’s OK, Sylvain,” he said abruptly, and began to lever himself up off the floor. He had stopped bothering to keep his voice down, and it resonated loudly in the empty corridor. “I just need to see them.”</p><p>“See <em>who</em>?” Sylvain asked desperately, but Dimitri was already turning away.</p><p>He muttered a curse under his breath, and hauled himself to his feet too. Dimitri had turned to walk further down the passage, out towards the tall window at the end that looked out over the front of the house. The steps were slow, but he seemed to grow more sure with each one.</p><p>With a sigh, Sylvain followed him. “Dimitri?” he tried again, and reached out to grab hold of his shoulder. “Where are you going?” But Dimitri just shrugged his hand off, and kept going.</p><p>
  
</p><p>This passageway was not long. Or at least, it <em>should</em> not be long. The wings of the house were short, blunt things—from the central corridor, running across the length of the house, up to the end of the wing where it looked over the driveway at the front should not be more than twenty metres at the most. But when Sylvain looked up from Dimitri’s shoulder, back out at the corridor ahead of him, the window at its end was a long, long way away.</p><p>His breath caught in his throat, and for a blinding, terrifying moment, Sylvain couldn’t tell if he was panting or not breathing at all.</p><p>The doors on each side of the corridor looked as they usually did—each one the same, most closed, a few cracked open just slightly, occasional faint hints of moonlight visible through the gaps. Dimitri walked straight past all of them. He didn’t pause, but he did look hard at every ajar door, inspected the shadows hiding just inside with quick, piercing glances.</p><p>Sylvain did his best to catch up to Dimitri, and quickly found himself almost running to just keep up with him. He made several attempts to walk shoulder to shoulder with Dimitri, but every time he would end up flinging out an arm to push open a door, and Sylvain would be forced to catch himself and slow to avoid walking straight into Dimitri’s arm. In the end, he fell into step just behind him, keeping close but not too close, doing his best to keep an eye on his friend.</p><p><em>This can’t be fucking happening</em>, he thought, half-delirious, as he gazed again at the window, small and distant in this endless passageway. They had to have been walking for several minutes now, and it seemed no closer. Was it the lack of sleep? He still felt bleary, in that confused liminal space between sleeping and waking, and the walls of the corridor seemed paper-thin, dreamy and insubstantial. Looking down at his own feet, still wearing only socks, those too seemed strange and disconnected. They fell on the floor, placed firmly one after the other, but the pressure of the ground on his soles seemed inconsequential, gossamer-light.</p><p>Ahead of him, Dimitri strode on, and Sylvain stumbled a little to catch up. He opened his mouth to swear, to spill out a plea to Dimitri to slow down—but speaking aloud seemed to go against the very fabric of the world they stood in, and he snapped his mouth shut again. The shadows, the distant moonlight, the terror slowly wrapping its fingers around him, all of it was antithetical to the little murmured <em>shit</em> that had threatened to erupt.</p><p>Though they were walking towards the only source of light (and they were still walking, Sylvain though desperately, they were somehow <em>still walking</em>), the shadows seemed only to be growing thicker. Some little part of his brain that was still coldly observing, standing aloof from the delirious fear overtaking the rest of his mind, noted this. Perhaps they were getting closer to the window, it said, the light was just growing brighter, and the shadows just looked sharper, darker in comparison. But the gibbering, animal part of his brain could only tell him that they weren’t sharper, they were just <em>thickening</em>, bulging, growing somehow more tangible. Behind Dimitri’s feet, the shadow cast by each leg seemed to twist a little each time he took another step.</p><p>The sickening quiet of their footsteps padding along the floor stretched and stretched, pulled as tight as a drum, and Sylvain found he had no breath left in his lungs to dare disrupt it. Even if he had wanted to</p><p>Like a wire brush on the taut skin, though, Dimitri began to mutter again. At first it was a barely audible susurrus, hardly words at all and more just the tiny sounds of the breath passing through his moving lips. But it grew, turning into a whispered litany that when Sylvain strained to hear it turned into a mantra, the same words repeated over and over.</p><p>“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” Dimitri said. “I’m coming, please, wait.”</p><p>Sylvain bit his lip. He tried one again to reach out and touch Dimitri’s shoulder, but more gently this time—not trying to pull him back, just reminding him of his presence, doing his best to ground him.</p><p>It had no effect. He kept walking as though Sylvain’s hand were not there. The muttering continued to grow louder, even as Dimitri’s steps began to falter, turn sluggish and hesitant.</p><p>Then he stopped dead, and went suddenly, startling quiet. His face turned up to look out towards the window, the moonlight, which seemed almost further away than ever, the light faint. The resettling of the silence was abrupt, enveloping them again and cutting Sylvain’s next attempt to reason with Dimitri like a pillow pushed down on his face, steadily suffocating him.</p><p>There was a sound behind Sylvain like a strong wind through a tree, and he turned to look back. Behind them, the house was just shades of black. He couldn’t remember if there was no window at the other end of the corridor, or if it was boarded up, or if it had just disappeared when they walked away from it. The silver-blue of the moonlight fell on patches of threadbare carpet, Sylvain’s own shadow thick and impenetrable. He suppressed a shudder, and turned away from it again, back to Dimitri.</p><p>The noise of wind came again, and this time it sounded almost like a voice, saying words Sylvain couldn’t make out. But the tone was mocking, somehow, indiscernible as it was—there was something of a vicious laugh to it. He looked at Dimitri again, nervously, unsure if he was just imagining it. But it was impossible to tell what Dimitri was hearing. He was trembling, now, shaking in a way that looked almost like a shiver of cold, but definitely, definitely was not.</p><p>Sylvain glanced back over his shoulder again. Nothing. Shadows, and dust, and the dim rays of cold light. As soon as he turned away again, though, the noise came again, solidifying still further. It was definitively a voice, now, a low, sneering whisper. He had not realised whispers <em>could </em>sneer quite like that.</p><p>“Sylvain,” it said, it <em>jeered</em>, and he jumped. But there was still nothing behind him.</p><p>He swallowed hard, and going against every fibre of his body, he cleared his throat. “Dimitri?” he said. “Do you hear that?”</p><p>Finally, <em>finally</em>, Dimitri turned and looked at him. But his pupils were blown wide, and his gaze seemed to go straight through Sylvain. “They’re here,” he whispered, and with tiny little steps on the spot, he began to rotate and turn away from the window.</p><p>Sylvain felt an inexplicable urge to just stop him turning, but his arms were like lead by his sides. All he could do was turn with Dimitri, look towards the dark end of the corridor.</p><p>The darkness was shifting again, moving in a way that went far beyond whatever slight movements they made for their shadows to reflect. The noise of wind swept by again, but this time it was more of a sensation than an actual sound, a quick, cold rush of <em>something </em>that swept over Sylvain like a bucket of water emptied over his head. Still, though, it carried words—his name, again, mocking and biting as though that alone were the worst insult that could possibly be flung at him.</p><p>Beside him, one of Dimitri’s hands lifted, stretching out to the shadows. “I’m here,” he said. There was a hopeless desperation to his voice.</p><p>Sylvain glanced at him in concern, but as soon as he looked away from the darkness in front of him, it began to move in his peripheral vision. His eyes snapped back to it, and immediately felt like a stone had been dropped into his stomach, dragging him downwards, cutting him open with blunt, bruising force.</p><p>In the corner of a doorway, where the shadows thickened, a figure was coalescing. It shifted in a way that made it hard to look at, but then it stepped forward, and the lines of the face were thrown into sharp relief in the moonlight, twisted up in some horrible approximation of a smile.</p><p>Sylvain took an involuntary half step backwards, a little punched out noise escaping him. “No,” he whispered, “No, no, no.”</p><p>Miklan’s crooked smile grew teeth. “Hello, little brother,” he said.</p><p>He stumbled to the side, and suddenly under Sylvain’s hand as he grasped for something to catch himself on was Dimitri’s arm. Gripping onto him so hard that at the back of his mind he was afraid of leaving bruises, he tugged Dimitri forward.</p><p>“We need to <em>go</em>,” Sylvain said, voice cracking out loudly. He pulled again at Dimitri’s arm, and then they were running—past Miklan, still half-submerged in the shadows, into the dark recesses of the corridor.</p><p>They reached the point where the wing met the main body of the house far more quickly than seemed right, considering how long they had walked away from it for, but Sylvain was in no mood to question it. They hurtled around the corner, and flew down the main staircase, wood slippery under their feet, banister creaking in protest under Sylvain’s free hand.</p><p>As they ran, Dimitri seemed to gradually become aware of Sylvain’s presence again. He went from being reluctantly dragged along, to sliding his hand into Sylvain’s as they fled, and clenching it in an iron grip.</p><p>Only when they reached the kitchen did they come to a shuddering stop. The moment they got through the door, Sylvain slammed his hand down on the light switches, filling the room with glaring brightness. Dimitri’s face was paler than ever as he blinked against it, and Sylvain realised suddenly that they were both panting.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em>,” he breathed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you would like, you can retweet this fic <a href="https://twitter.com/blackberrychai/status/1369077290022371331?s=20">here</a>, and please go give the amazing art some love <a href="https://twitter.com/Yevievt/status/1369076396799107072?s=20">here</a>! Chapter two (with another wonderful drawing) should be up at the weekend.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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